A YA LITERATURE SALON

02.16.09

Ahem. I’m ready to talk about the awards now. Finally. First of all, I have to hand it to Bridget for calling it. She wrote about the Newbery winner, The Graveyard Book, and one of the Printz honor books, The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks.

Belatedly, I would like to give a shout-out to two of my favorite teen books of the year, The Hunger Games and John Green’s Paper Towns, neither of which got awards. Oh, John Green, you can’t win every year, but you are still my favorite. Sigh.

On to the actual Printz winners…with venom and spoilers. I read Disreputable History and loved it. This great boarding school story raises some intriguing questions about class and gender and is a must-read for budding feminists. It put me in the mindset to enjoy the Printz winner, Melina Marchetta’s Jellicoe Road, which is also set at a boarding school. I liked Saving Francesca. I was ready to love Jellicoe Road!

Alas, I have to be a voice of dissent. In my opinion, this book does not deserve an entire Printz award. It was a great half of a book. If I could, I would give it the Ntz Award, for best last half of a young adult novel. The first half was slow, with unappealing characters, creeping action, and borderline confusing alternating narrative threads. The kids at this boarding school are fighting this “war” against the Townies and the Cadets. The war seems to have no purpose or cause, but everyone is all worked up about it anyway. This part, centered on 17-year-old house leader Taylor, switches off with the story of five friends living near the same boarding school years earlier. Why should I care about any of this? If this hadn’t been an award book, I would have chucked it out the window after 100 pages. Luckily, I held on. Halfway through the book, things change. The characters get more compelling and the idiot war slows down–the focus changes to relationships and putting together the past, with the two narratives meshing. This part is great. I started to really care about Taylor and her bizarro past. It’s complex and totally worthwhile. But overall, this book was too uneven for me to love. The Ntz Award is the best it’ll get from me.

Oh my gosh Janet, you are so funny. The Ntz award! I know another award I’d like to create: one for the best first chapter of a book (followed by a lot of not-so-great chapters). We could call it Bright Beginnings, Stupid Middles and Ends.